Hope for a third party

March 27, 2013

It’s easy to understand how the country has become polarized. There is validity in opposing views, and life is full of paradox. Of greater interest is the troubling sense that neither of our major political parties is capable of delivering practical and sensible positions on both social and fiscal problems.

Republicans profess to be the champions of fiscal sanity, though the nation’s debt blossomed under the Reagan tax cuts and the unfunded wars of George W. Bush (no doubt stoked as much by the military-industrial complex as by post-9/11 hysteria). I’d like to jump on the conservative bandwagon if I could believe the GOP really stood for a sustainable fiscal future.But I cannot.

There is too much evidence that the real agenda is the protection and growth of individual and corporate wealth and the power of the party itself. (After all, there is no glory in not spending the people’s money. It’s in the political DNA.) Democrats have on whole been no worse – or better – than self-professed conservative counterparts. We can thank Bill Clinton for that most rare achievement: a federal budget surplus.

Democrats offer an appealing alternative to those who are offended by the GOP’s insensitivity on social issues. Heck, that’s hardly a feat since party leaders themselves decried the stupidity of statements made by (thankfully failed) Senate candidates in the last election. Denial of science, church-state separation, and human rights is not a way to win the hearts and minds of a diverse and increasingly educated people. But not all Democrats are paragons of social virtue.

They are prone to land in jail on corruption charges for using campaign funds for personal use, evading taxes, and generally cashing in on public office. Conflict of interest is rife and has even attained a status of semi-legitimacy among the party elite (at least in Illinois!).

There have also been sincere social progressives to whom we owe much. But too often they have failed to understand that taxpayers, not government agencies, pay the tab for social benefits.

So what’s needed is a third party alternative that advocates a sustainable, vibrant economy and intelligent, nonsectarian social policies. Instead, we got the Tea Party, dedicated to the proposition that the government that governs least governs best. The “party of no” seems to believe that what happens beyond your own backyard is of no consequence and certainly not your concern. This line of libertarian thought appeals, at times, but its logical end in a complex nation and world is anarchy. No one, no community, and no nation is an island.

Is there hope for another third party alternative? Probably not yet. We’re better educated than ever before, but we’re still not “there.” We’ll have to be patient and come to know the meaning of the late anthropologist Margaret Mead when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I find this a much more appealing and hopeful message than we’ve recently heard from the leaders of any political party.